CHAPTER 13

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CHAPTER 13 SUMMARY

Beginning in the 1820s, a powerful movement celebrating the common person and promoting the “New Democracy” transformed the earlier elitist character of American politics. The controversial election of the Yankee sophisticate John Quincy Adams in 1824 angered the followers of Andrew Jackson, who had received more popular votes. Jackson’s sweeping presidential victory in 1828 represented the political triumph of the New Democracy, including the spoils-rich political machines that thrived in the new environment. Jackson’s simple, popular ideas and rough-hewn style reinforced the growing belief that any ordinary person could hold public office. The“Tariff of Abominations” and the nullification crisis with South Carolina revealed a growing sectionalism and anxiety about slavery that ran up against Jackson’s fierce nationalism. Jackson exercised the powers of the presidency against his opponents, particularly Calhoun and Clay. He made the Bank of the United States a symbol of evil financial power and killed it after a bitter political fight. Destroying the bank reinforced Jacksonians’ hostility to concentrated and elite-dominated financial power, but also left the United States without any effective financial system. In opposition to Jackson’s aggressive assertion of power and his numerous controversial policies, a new Whig party emerged to compete with the Jacksonian Democrats. Jackson’s presidency also focused on issues of westward expansion. Pursuing paths of“civilization,” Native Americans of the Southeast engaged in extensive agricultural and educational development. But pressure from white settlers and from the state governments proved overwhelming, and Jackson finally supported the forced removal of all southeastern Indians to Oklahoma along the “Trail of Tears.”Jackson’s ill-considered economic policies came home to roost under the unlucky Martin Van Buren, his handpicked successor. As the country plunged into a serious depression following the panic of 1837, Van Buren continued futile Jacksonian policies by forcing the removal of all federal funds from private banks. In Texas, American settlers successfully rebelled against Mexico and declared their independence. Jackson recognized the Texas Republic but, because of the slavery controversy, he refused its application for annexation to the United States. The Whigs saw these economic and political troubles as a path to the White House. But rather than campaign on issues, they used the political hoopla of the new mass democratic process to turn a western aristocrat and military hero, William Henry Harrison, into a democratic symbol of the “log cabin and hard cider.” The Whig victory signaled the emergence of a new two-party system, in which the two parties’genuine philosophical differences and somewhat different constituencies proved less important than their widespread popularity and shared roots in the new American democratic spirit.